TELE highlighted at Regional Conservation Partnership Network Gathering

November 18, 2014

Natural resource professionals from across New England came together on Thursday, November 13th for the 2014 Regional Conservation Partnership (RCP) Network Gathering in Nashua, New Hampshire. RCPs are informal networks of people that come together to increase the pace and scale of land protection across town and sate boundaries. The theme for the 2014 conference was “Enhancing the Success of your RCP through Cross-Sector Collaboration.”

The SFFI team has provided our Tools for Engaging Landowners Effectively workshop for a number of natural resource professionals involved with RCPs. In particular, SFFI worked closely with four RCPs through the New York/New England Family Forest Owner Engagement Initiative, a unique landscape conservation and stewardship project aimed at identifying the most effective ways to engage individual and family forest owners in managing and conserving woodlands.

At the Network Gathering, Karen Bennett (UNH Cooperative Extension) presented the initial results from the New York/New England Family Forest Owner Engagement Initiative. Bennett highlighted the importance of the TELE training in the development of the RCP’s communication plans and how the groups used targeted marketing to achieve their objectives.

The SFFI team will be closely tracking the results of the New York/New England Family Forest Owner Engagement Initiative and interviewing RCP members about the process. We will use this information to develop a set of case studies intended to illuminate the influence of TELE in landowner outreach initiatives.